This is a presentation by Michael Amitay of the Washington Kurdish Institute, for the New Tactics World Symposium in 2004. Past conflicts in northern Iraq, including the genocidal use of weapons of mass destruction, continue to take a severe toll on people’shealth and on the environment. The Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), with its partners the University of Liverpool and the Halabja Postgraduate Medical Institute (a consortium of local physicians and academics) uses Geographic Information Systems analysis to correlate environmental, health and other data with attack sites. This helps local authorities create effective research, environmental safety and medical treatment programs, while adding to the body of knowledge about the long-term effects of chemical weapons that can help preparedness efforts around the world.

1. Using GIS to Support Conflict Recovery:
A Response to Genocide and Use
of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
in Iraqi Kurdish Communities
Presented by Mike Amitay, Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI)

2. Washington
Kurdish
Institute
University of Liverpool
C. M. Gosden
D. Gardener
Royal Liverpool University Hospital
United Kingdom
Halabja Post-Graduate Medical Institute (HMI)
Doctors, Medical Schools, Health Officials, NGOs,
and communities throughout Iraqi Kurdistan (est.1999)

3. Our Program Goals
• Help people and communities recover
•Establishing sensitive treatment and medical research programs
to account for complex long-term health effects of WMD exposure
•Strengthen local responses with training / technical assistance
•Help establish current risks of environmental contamination
•Raise awareness of “silent genocide” and generate
international assistance
•Aid local and international conflict recovery and
WMD preparedness/response efforts
• Correlate WMD agents to specific medical disorders
• Learn about attacks, survivors, health effects, best treatments

4. Integrating Data and Maps
Mapping Software: ArcView GIS
http://www.esri.com/
http://www.conservationgis.org/ecpstory/esriform.html
• Political boundaries, population centers, roads, and waterways
• Topographic relief, satellite images, and vegetation maps.
Collect data with creative, culturally sensitive methods
designed for specific mission and local sensitivities
Health indicators
Housing Conditions
Water Sources
Socio-Economic indicators
Migration patterns
Exposure to Conflict
Environmental testing results

5. Geographic Information Systems (GIS):
Effective tool for complex conflict recovery efforts
Collect, Integrate, Share and Understand Data
GENERAL BENEFITS
1. Inform effective responses
2. Enhance strategic planning and coalition building
3. Aid advocacy, education and public awareness efforts
4. Facilitate realistic needs assessments
5. Support critical local information infrastructures

6. VISUALIZING ETHNIC CLEANSING:
AL-ANFAL : “THE SPOILS”
• Military campaigns to subjugate and depopulate Kurdish areas at
the end of Iran-Iraq War (Spring 1987 – Autumn 1988)
•Climax in decades-long effort by Baghdad regimes to forcibly
administer the Kurdish people and their natural resources.
•Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were killed,
wounded, displaced, and dispossessed.
Abitrary arrests Mass and Summary executions
Mass disappearances Torture
Forced labour Destruction of villages/infrastructure
Environmental degradation Concentration Camps
Looting of property and livestock “Arabisation”
Forced resettlement Destruction of rural economy
Deskilling Economic deprivation/blockade
Use of Chemical Weapons and possibly other WMD

7. TABRIZ
RASHT
DOHUK
DOHUK
ERBIL
ERBIL TEHRAN
SULEYMANIYEH
SULEYMANIYEH
Halabja
Halabja
HAMADAN
DAMASCUS QOM
A
BAGHDAD
AMMAN
ESFAHAN
AVAZ
BASRAH ABADAN
KUWAIT
CITY
RIYADH

8. WHY USE GENOTOXIC WEAPONS?
- OFTEN CHEAP & EASY TO PRODUCE
- DIFFICULT TO COUNTERACT
- PRODUCE MANY CASUALTIES
- TERRORIZE OPPONENTS
- LONG TERM EFFECTS
- SILENT GENOCIDE
Infertility
Childhood death and handicap
Disability, deaths, cancers
Elimination of population years after attacks

9. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD)
CHEMICAL BIOLOGICAL RADIOLOGICAL
MUSTARD AGENTS BIOLOGICAL AGENTS
ENRICHED URANIUM
SULPHER
NITROGEN ANTRHAX, BRUCELLA
ROTAVIRUS, PLAGUE, MEDICAL ISOTOPE
TYPHOID, HEMORRAGHIC WASTE ?
CONJUCTIVITIS VIRUS
IRRADIATED
REACTOR WASTE ?
NERVE AGENTS
IRRADIATED
SARIN ZICONIUM
CYCLOSARIN BIOLOGICAL TOXINS MUNITIONS
SOMAN
TABUN AFLATOXIN
VX MYCOTOXIN
BZ BOTULINUM
TRICHOTHECENES

10. CIVILIANS PARTICULARLY VULNERABLE TO WMD
•LACK DETECTION SYSTEMS
•LACK PROTECTION (Gas Masks, detox materials, etc.)
•LACK MEDICINES & MEDICAL EQUIPMENT
•LACK DECONTAMINATION CAPABILITY
•DEPEND ON CONTAMINATED FOOD/WATER
•LACK INFORMED RESPONSES

11. PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE OF WMD EFFECTS
World War I
Mustard Gas Factory
Workers
Hiroshima/Nagasaki
US DOD Testing of
“Volunteers”
Chernobyl
Iran/Iraq War
Japan Sarin Attacks
Biological Outbreaks

12. GENOCIDAL EFFECTS OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Sterilize men and women Cause birth defects Cause stillbirths and infant deaths
Male and female infertility Handicapped children Dead babies and grieving parents
· Disrupt family structure · Heart defects · High emotional cost
· No population growth · Spina bifida · Bereavement counselling
· Divorce · Facial clefts · Ultimate cause of population disruption
· Non-marriagability · Social stigma
· Down’s syndrome
· Childhood cancers
Terrify the population by affecting successive generations

13. United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Resolution 260, United Nations General Assembly, 9 December 1948.
ARTICLE 1
Genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they
undertake to prevent and to punish.
ARTICLE 2
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in
whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The following acts shall be punishable:
ARTICLE 3
a) Genocide;
b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
c) Direct and public incitement to commit
genocide;
d) Attempt to commit genocide;
e) Complicity in genocide.
ARTICLE 4
Persons committing genocide shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public
officials or private individuals.

14. Mapping Known/Suspected WMD Attack Sites
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
• United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iraq (Max van der Stoel)
reported to the UN Human Rights Commission in 1993
•Middle East Watch (Human Rights Watch)
TESTIMONIAL EVIDENCE
•Testimony from eyewitnesses and victims
•Middle East Watch researchers
•Kurdish military personnel and leaders
•Former Iraqi military officers
•Staff of local and International NGOs
FORENSIC EVIDENCE
• Berjinni site samples (bombed August 1988)
1993 MoD Porton Down reported degradation products of Mustard
gas and nerve agent (sarin) in samples

15. COMPOSITE MAP SHOWING EXTENT
o o
OF ANFAL CAMPAIGNS
oo IN NORTHERN IRAQ
o o FEBRUARY – SEPTEMBER, 1988
(Human Rights Watch)
DOHUK
Iraqi Kurdistan, 1988 o
population: 4,000,000 o
TURKEY o
o oo
DOHUK oo
o
oo
MOSIL ERBIL
ERBIL
SULEYMANIYEH
SYRIA KIRKUK
HALABJA
A o
ooSULEYMANIYEH
BAGHDAD IRAN
JORDAN o
A
KIRKUK
A
o
HALABJA
SAUDI BASRA
ARABIA
KUWAIT
o A

16. HEALTH DATA COLLECTION
• Health survey of 49,000 people in Dohuk, Erbil,
Halabja,Suleymania regions (>1%)
• Health survey of 8,000 Kurdish and Iraqi
refugees in 5 US cities
• Health data from 4,200 women participating in
WKI birth defect prevention program (folic acid)
• Health data from 80,000 primary care
recipients in vulnerable communities (IDPs,
rural villagers, widows, orphans)

17. Committee to Survey the Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite
Division of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press, Washington DC 1993.
Specific Findings: Evidence indicates causal relationship between
exposure to mustard gas and following health conditions:
Respiratory cancers Eye diseases
Nasopharyngeal Recurrent corneal ulceration
Laryngeal Delayed recurrent keratitis
Lung Chronic conjunctivitis
Leukemia Reproductive dysfunction
Acute nonlymphocytic leukemia Genotoxic, mutagenic
Bone marrow and immunosuppression Causes sterility, germ cell destruction
Sexual dysfunction, scrotal/penile scars
Chronic respiratory diseases Psychological disorders
Chronic bronchitis & emphysema Mood disorders
Asthma Anxiety disorders including PTSD
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Other traumatic stress disorder
Chronic laryngitis responses
Skin cancer Chronic skin disease
Chronic skin ulceration and scar formation
Pigmentary abnormalities of skin

18. CANCER MEDICAL BIRTH DEFECTS CARDIO-RESPIRATORY INFERTILITY
TREATMENT CONDITIONS TREATMENT TREATMENT TREATMENT
Conventional
Radiological Conventional
Radiological
20
Lymphoma
Chemical 15 Chemical
Biological Biological
Brain
10
Leukaemia
5
BIRTH DEFECTS BIRTH
PREVENTION DEFECTS
PREVENTION
0
14% population loss of under 16 year olds: World Food Programme 1987 - 1999

19. Folic Acid / Birth Defect Prevention Program
Chokmakh Village: Suleymania 2003

20. COLLECTING ENVIRONMENTAL DATA
Genotoxicity screening
in soil, water, other materials
Testing foodstuffs for
bological toxins including aflatoxin
Measuring radiation: gamma
(full spectrum for all isotopes), as well as
alpha and beta.
Coordinating advanced testing
to follow-up and confirm initial results and
inform responses and remediation

21. Halabja/Anab Grid Map:
Screening for Genotoxic and
Cytotoxic Substances
What can local
authorities do when
contamination is
found?
Is US-funded school
being built on land
known to be
contaminated?

22. Limitations of GIS Model
• Technology dependent
-electricity, computers, software, costs sometimes impractical
• Map deficiencies
- unavailable in scale needed, inaccurate
• Significant training required

23. GIS: A Tool for Healing and Prevention
Mass grave memorial
Halabja